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Bookmark or Share- single word requests - What is the opposite of "steep"? - English ...In rock-climbing, we describe an incline as "steep" (which is anything from 90 degrees to overhanging) but we don't have a good word to mean "not steep". At least I've never heard anyone use one;
- A word for "reaching the top of a hill or mountain"John D's suggestion of 'summit' is not incorrect, however I would avoid its use when talking about a hill or mountain as you might end up repeating the word (to summit the summit). Instead, I'd recommend the use of the transitive verb surmount with much the same meaning.
- "It's all downhill from here"—meaning and etymologyAlthough it would seem that going down a hill is easier than going up, downhill has meant a decline since the 1500s, although Daniel Defoe also used it in the sense of easy ("a very short cut, and all down hill," Robinson Crusoe, 1719). An 1856 history of England had the sense of declining: "The monks had traveled swiftly on the downhill road ...
- Use of "hill to die on" - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange[Noun phrase]: hill to die on (plural hills to die on) (idiomatic usage): An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost. Etymology: an allusion to the military practice of capturing/holding a hill (high ground), no matter the cost or (lack of) benefit, as in the Battle of ...
- Distinguishing whether "up" is a preposition or a part of a phrasal ...With the sentence He ran up a big hill, ran (run) retains its usual, core meaning. J.R.'s second (synonym) test above illustrates this nicely. However, I would suggest that in 'he ran up a big hill' there is more cohesion between ran and up than in 'he ran up in the Simien Mountains before coming to the UK'.
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